What we’ve learned putting AI to work in HR.
Notes from our engineers and HR practitioners on permissions, provenance, pay transparency and the rules that govern AI at work. 18 notes since November 2025.
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- № 11The best manager is the one who didn't volunteer.A preregistered experiment found that people who put themselves forward to manage performed worse than people assigned at random. A field study found a top-decile people manager cuts turnover by 60%. The HR record can see the second effect, and almost no one measures it.Research3 min read
- № 10Every HR question has two dates.A change in an HR system has the date it took effect and the date someone entered it. Board-pack headcounts drift, payroll misfires and AI assistants give precise wrong answers when nobody says which date a question means.Field note4 min read
- № 09Show the manager their own hit rate, not the model's explanation.In a hiring experiment, managers handed the decision to an algorithm 34% of the time, 50% after seeing how accurate they themselves had been, and no more often when the algorithm was explained. The design lesson for any HR assistant is not what most vendors assume.Research3 min read
- № 08Approving an AI tool is what brings in the works council.A German labour court found that staff using a public chatbot on their own accounts needed no works-council agreement. Once the employer provides the tool and keeps the logs, the analysis changes. Plan for it before the pilot starts.Perspective4 min read
- № 07When an HR system says nothing, ask why.An empty result can mean there is no data, or that you are not allowed to see it. Most AI tools treat the two as the same thing, and HR decisions get made on the difference.Field note3 min read
- № 06Pay transparency: what the laws actually did.Canada's public salary disclosure cut the gender pay gap by 20 to 40%. Austria's internal pay reports did nothing measurable. US posting laws raised wages 1 to 4%. The difference is whether anyone could ask about a specific person. That is the part of the EU directive to prepare for first.Research4 min read
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